Ah, the beauty of free speech. Just because I can predict what you’re going to say, doesn’t mean you can’t say. Nor does it mean I agree, or that this blog exists to cater to your position. But you knew that. So why did you comment?

You said you “know” what you’re going to say, which is infinitely stronger than you “can predict”. Unless, perhaps, you believe that posting this will alter the time-space continuum such that what you know we will say becomes something different and merely predictable but know knowable in advance.

In response to your specific claim that $50 billion is a “bonkers amount of money”, much of it will be in infrastructure, on which Russia in any case intends to be spend around $1,000 billion in the next decade. So $50 billion is rather modest in comparison.

Putin’s intonation sounded a little different here. It’s probably because the only other times I’ve heard him speak English were in more prepared speeches, and he probably didn’t have time to rehearse this one.